Paula A. Franzese
Peter W. Rodino Professor of Law
Professor Paula Franzese, the Peter W. Rodino Professor of Law, is one of the country's leading experts in property law as well as government ethics. She has spearheaded ethics reform initiatives on behalf of three governors, serving as Special Ethics Counsel to Governor Richard Codey, Chair of the State Ethics Commission, Vice-Chair of the Election Law Enforcement Commission and as ethics advisor to state and local governments across the country, including Mayor Cory Booker's administration in Newark.
The author of numerous publications, her scholarship in the area of Property Law includes critical examination of common interest communities, homeowners associations and the dilemma of privatization, the law of servitudes, exclusionary zoning, affordable housing, adverse possession doctrine and takings law. She joined in the submission to the U.S. Supreme Court of an amicus brief in the Kelo Case, and has written and presented on takings law reform. She has been elected a Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, a highly coveted honor, is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and the recipient of numerous accolades, including the Sir Thomas More Medal of Honor, the YWCA Woman of Influence Award, the Women Lawyers Association's Trailblazer Award, and the State Bar Foundation's Medal of Honor. Most recently, in 2013 she received the Woman of Achievement Award from the NJ Federation of Women's Clubs. In 2011, she was presented with the National Council on Governmental Ethics Laws(COGEL)Award, the highest form of recognition conferred by the organization, in honor of her "significant,demonstrable and positive contributions to the fields of campaign finance, elections, ethics, freedom of information and lobbying over a significant period of time." Amongst her groundbreaking initiatives in those arenas, she and Justice Daniel J. O'Hern promulgated the Uniform Ethics Code, a pioneering statutory achievement and a model for national replication.
Professor Franzese’s casebook, Property Law and the Public Interest (3d ed., Lexis, 2007), (with Callies, Mandelker & Hylton), was widely heralded as one of the first to expansively explore the public interest dimensions of Property law. She has been named to the editorial board of the Land Use and Environmental Law Review, a prestigious peer-reviewed scholarly journal. She has published extensively on the anatomy of ethics reform of state and local government, and in the areas of legal pedagogy and attorney professionalism. Professor Franzese is the creator and editor of the new Westlaw collection of substantive first year review books entitled "The Short and Happy Guide" series. She is the author of A Short and Happy Guide to Property (West, 2d ed. 2012),the author of Strategies and Techniques for Teaching Property (Aspen 2012), is a contributor to the books America's Second Gilded Age? Perspectives on Law and Class Differences (NYU Press, 2006), The Affective Assistance of Counsel: Practicing Law as a Healing Profession (Carolina Academic Press, 2007), and Reaction and Reform in New Jersey (Hall Institute, 2007).
Professor Franzese is nationally renowned for her excellence in law teaching. Featured in the forthcoming book, What the Best Law Teachers Do (Harvard Univ. Press, 2013), she is the unprecedented ten-time recipient of the Student Bar Association's Professor of the Year Award, has been named "Exemplary Teacher" by the American Association of Higher Education and was ranked the Top Law Professor in New Jersey by the New Jersey Law Journal. She has demonstrated and deconstructed her pedagogical expertise on teaching as both art and science at workshops and colloquia across the country. She is the Gilbert's "Legend of the Law" in Property (CD series, Lexis) and the national Property lecturer for the BAR/BRI bar review course. She is the past Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Teaching Methods and serves as Vice-Chair of the Legal Education Section of the American Bar Association.
Professor Franzese was a litigator with Cahill, Gordon, and Reindel in New York City, where she also served as a member of the New York Housing Court Reform Project and the Governor's Task Force on Life and Law. She clerked for Justice Alan B. Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court. She received her B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she was awarded the Bryson Prize, Alpha Zeta Fellowship, Marion Churchill White Prize, Davidson-Foreman Foundation Award and Barnard Alumnae Fellowship, and her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where she was an International Fellow, Teaching Fellow and recipient of the prestigious Rosenman Prize for excellence in public law courses.
PUBLICATIONS
LAW REVIEW ARTICLES
Law Teaching for the Conceptual Age, 44 Seton Hall L. Rev.__ (forthcoming 2013)
Reclaiming the Promise of the Judicial Branch: Toward a More Meaningful Standard of Judicial Review as Applied to New York Eminent Domain Law, 38 Fordham Urban L.J. 1091 (2011)
New Jersey Common Interest Communities: Predictors of Distress and an Agenda for Reform, 63 Rutgers L. Rev. 101 (2011)
The Twin Rivers Case: Of Homeowners Associations, Free Speech Rights and Privatized Mini-Governments, 5 Rutgers J. Law & Public Policy 4 (2008)
Trust and Community: The Common Interest Community as Metaphor and Paradox, 72 Univ. of Missouri L. Rev. 1110 (2007)
Restoring the Public Trust: An Agenda for Ethics Reform of State Government and a Proposed Model for New Jersey, 57 Rutgers L. Rev. 1175 (2005)
Privatization and Its Discontents: Common Interest Communities and the Rise of Government for the "Nice.", 37 The Urban Lawyer 335 (2005)
Solutions to the Crisis in Affordable Housing: A Proposed Model for New York City, 3 Rutgers J. of Law & Urban Policy 84 (2005) (Maria Anderson)
BOOKS AND BOOK CHAPTERS
Strategies and Techniques of Law School Teaching: Property, Aspen Publishing (2012)
A Short and Happy Guide to Property, Thomson (2011)
Reaction and Reform in New Jersey, Hall Institute (2007) (Contributor, (with Justice Daniel J. O'Hern), Ethics Reform Recommendations for The Executive Branch of New Jersey Government)
Property Law and the Public Interest, Third Edition, Lexis (2007) (with Mandelker, Callies & Hylton)
The Affective Assistance of Counsel: Practicing Law As a Healing Profession, Carolina Academic Press (2006) (Contributor, Marjorie Silver, ed.)
Residential Privilege: The Advent of the Guarded Subdivision, to appear in America’s Second Gilded Age? Perspectives on Law and Class Differences, NYU Press (2005) (Paul Carrington & Trina Jones, eds.)
The Law According to Skyboxes, (2005) (Contributor, Paul Carrington, ed.)
Legends of the Law on Property, Thomson (2003)
BOOK REVIEWS
Beyond Privatopia: Rethinking Residential Private Government, J. of Regional Science (2012)
COMMENTARIES
New Twin Rivers Test Applied to Homeowners Associations' Restrictions on Residents' Speech, LexisNexis 2007, Expert Commentaries Series
PRESENTATIONS
Prosecutorial Misconduct, The Hall Institute (February 22, 2012)
Prosecuting Public Corruption: Safeguards, Excesses and an Agenda for Reform, Circuit Review Symposium, Seton Hall Law School (March 13, 2012)
Eminent Domain: The NY Experience, Fordham Urban Law Journal Symposium (February 11, 2011)
Attorney Professionalism and the Public Trust, New York State Bar Foundation (February 25, 2011)
Foreclosure Procedures in Turmoil, National Public Radio (October 15, 2010)
Home Foreclosure Crisis, CNN (October 8, 2010)
Ethics Reform and the Promise of Good Government, League of Municipalities keynote speaker (November 18, 2010) (N.J. League of Municipalities 95th Annual Conference, Atlantic City, NJ)